Wednesday, February 14, 2018

I reckon eventually, something will blow

Barry Soper made a surprising statement on Newstalk ZB
yesterday. I didn’t take down his exact words, but essentially he said nothing was
going to happen in the next three years (he meant politically) except that
Jacinda Ardern was going to have a baby.

Perhaps it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the
media’s fascination with the prime ministerial pregnancy. But if not, it was an
astonishingly bold pronouncement from someone who has covered politics as long
as Soper has, and who must surely know the risks of making predictions.

Just hours later, Bill English announced he was retiring,
and immediately the political landscape looked very different. Presto – just like
that.

Now Wellington is buzzing with speculation about who will
succeed English and what difference it might make. The consensus seems to be
that National must look to the 2023 election rather than 2020 to regain power.
This is based on the conventional wisdom that National’s fatal strategic
mistake in 2017 was that it lacked a strong coalition ally, and that it’s going
to take longer than three years for one to emerge.

This is an entirely plausible scenario, but it overlooks one
possibility. No one can predict with any certainty that the present Labour-led government will hold together for a full term. Its internal contradictions and tensions
are such that it could easily tear itself apart, in which case all bets will be
off.

The greatest challenge will be reconciling the strains
between New Zealand First and the Greens, who represent polar opposites on the ideological
spectrum. There will be ample opportunity for this fault line to rupture, and I
think we got a glimpse of one this morning with the announcement that the
government might scrap plans to put video cameras on fishing boats to monitor
bycatch (albatrosses, seals and so forth) and possible illegal dumping of fish.

This is hardly likely to play well with Labour’s Green
allies, whose attitude toward fishing companies was summed up by former Green
MP Kevin Hague’s statement that the industry couldn’t be trusted. This puts the
National Party – which supports the video cameras proposal – in the unusual
position of being able to claim the moral high ground with environmentalists,
which won’t go down well with the Greens.

For conspiracy theorists, there’s a delectable note of
intrigue here because of Winston Peters’ well-documented association with
fishing industry interests. Fishing companies have been generous donors to New
Zealand First and Peters was instrumental in the Labour-led government’s decision
to kybosh the Kermadec marine sanctuary, which was initially championed by
Green MP Gareth Hughes.

That backtrack ruffled Green feathers, and so will the
retreat from the video cameras proposal. It will be nigh impossible to allay
suspicion that Peters wielded his baneful influence behind the scenes.

There is potential for many more such irritants in the fraught
relationship between New Zealand First and the Greens. We’ve seen a few already
and the government is only four months old. Green MPs, who are driven by idealism
and like to think of themselves as highly principled, will be able to button
their lips and play the pragmatic game for only so long. I reckon eventually,
something will blow.

2 comments:

Green MPs do like to think of themselves as a lot of things these days...principled when it suits them. I couldn't see much evidence of that over the disgraceful Turei affair, apart from old-school Greens, & we know what happened to those. I'm still not seeing it from most. It remains to be seen if they elect their best candidate as co-leader...lets see how principled they are with this next big test.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.